Is homosexuality an abomination?

[anotheratheisthere]

Yes.

The Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination. (Leviticus 18-22)

On the same page, it uses the exact same word to describe eating shellfish. (Leviticus 11-10 and 11-11)


Please heed the word of God:

Being gay is an abomination.

Eating shrimp is an abomination.


Being gay is just as much an abomination as eating shrimp.

Eating shrimp is just as much an abomination as being gay.


If you ever ate a shrimp cocktail you committed as grievous a sin as the most pervert homosexual.

If you ever had gay sex, you committed as grievous a sin as the most pervert shrimp cocktail eater.


If you are a gay Christian who judges and condemns people for committing the abomination of eating lobster, then you're a hypocrite.

If you're a Christian who eats lobster and you judge and condemn people for committing the abomination of being gay, then you're a hypocrite.


Gay people and people who eat seafood are abominations! Both groups are disgusting! You make me sick! How can you POSSIBLY want to have gay sex and/or eat shrimp, clams, oysters and lobster? PERVERTS!

I think we should amend the Constitution to specify that marriage is between a man and a woman.

I think we should amend the Constitution to specify that anybody who eats lobster, shrimp, clams or oysters will be deported and/or waterboarded.

[micatala]

I appreciate gentledove's thorough and thoughtful post, and will try to respond in detail in the near future. For now, let me address just one issue.

Everyone argues from a bias and a network of presuppositional beliefs, unproven by natural science (even naturalistic atheists), called a worldview, through which he interprets facts and evidence. Everyone has the “burden of proof� for his or her worldview. Each and every person—not just “some Christians"--is trying to “impose� his doctrines on everyone else. Are you not also here arguing that I should accept that homosexuality is the same as eating shrimp?

There is a difference between imposing a view on someone else, and attempting to persuade them to accept that view of their own free will.

There is also a difference between deciding what is moral and proper for oneself and deciding not only for oneself but for everyone else.

I am advocating that, as Christians, we should acknowledge the right of gays to decide for themselves whether their relationships are sinful or not. I am attempting to persuade you, based on the Bible, that this position is supportable from a Christian perspective. I am not trying to persuade you to personally accept that, with respect to your own actions, homosexuality be considered equivalent to eating shrimp.

I am not trying to impose my view on other churches or other Christians. I would certainly accept that each church or denomination can decide for itself what its teaching will be. I will say I am disappointed that many churches and individual Christians continue to make homosexuality an issue, and insist it is sinful in all situations. However, I will do no more than attempt to persuade others, and I do this mostly because I feel much harm is being done to gays who are or would be believers by the current positions many churches and Christians take.


In disagreements between believers in a society where everyone is free to pursue their faith according to their own consciences, "imposition of views" isn't or shouldnt be an issue.

WHere imposition IS an issue is in the legal realm, which is not really the topic of this thread. However, I will say that bans on gay marriage ARE an imposition of one view onto others, and an inappropriate one which I view as unconstitutional.

Imposition means that one person is limiting the freedom of another, or using coercive or forceful means to get them to change their behavior.

Now, a person who claims that anyone must follow their particular views in order to be considered a Christian is, in some sense, trying to impose their view on the body of Christ as a whole. WHile I find this unfortunate, those attempting this through public discourse have no standing or capacity to force others to behave or believe as they would have them and so, I would not characterize this as an "imposition" per se, even though there attempts may make some people upset or angry.

However, when they attempt to have their religious views enacted as law, then, in my view, we definitely do have an imposition and a major problem. Even if one accepts that homosexuality is an abomination to God, this is a religious belief and so enacting it into law in a country where we have freedom of religion is entirely inappropriate.

Having a majority impose their religious view on gays is just as bad as if a majority of Catholics in a given location passed laws against eating fish on Fridays during lent, or Baptists requiring everyone to undergo water baptism, or evangelicals requiring everyone to pay a 10% tithe to a church.

However, the legal discussion is really for another thread. In this one, I'll continue to stick to making the case that it is not necessary for Christians to consider homosexuality an abomination, and will address the issues you raised in your last post.

[GentleDove]

From Page 4 Post 37
Firstly let me admit the Bible does declare homosexuality an abomination, I just challenge whether it is correct in attributing this notion to the proposed God. Also, I may be arguing a position that GentleDove is not overtly for or against.

The Bible says it’s the Word of God; but if you presuppose that the Bible is not the Word of God, then you wouldn’t take it on its own authority. I believe the Biblical worldview comports with reason and reality; whereas I think other worldviews are lacking.

An analogous example of something that is a sin against God and which a lot of people in this country still think is morally wrong--murder. 1) murder is a sin, and 2) former murderers are allowed to let people live. Now this really frustrates unrepentant murderers, but that doesn’t mean we should repeal all laws against murder. It “discriminates against� the unrepentant murderer, but justly so.

Here though there is a clear victim. In the case of otherwise "legit" homosexuality, we have two (or more ) consenting adults. This is what plagues me about religious arguments against homosexuality. I personally am not one who seeks male sex, but surely if someone does that should be their own business. And as the government is in the business of handing out marriage licenses, surely it should be required to accept any two (or more) folks who wish to declare their love for one another.

As I stated in another post, I don’t believe that sin is a sin because in my estimation someone has been victimized. A sin is wrong because it is a repudiation of God’s holiness and righteousness, which He lets us know by telling us in the Bible what sin is.

Governments, right or wrong, may hand out marriage licenses, but only God has the right to declare what marriage is, as Creator and King.

Consider the contrary. Why should governments hand out licenses at all if anyone can marry anyone (or anything, for that matter)? Why shouldn’t three women and a 5 year old boy marry a Doberman pincer? Why shouldn’t a person marry and divorce different people and things 102 times in her lifetime, having children with 60 different men, and then marrying 20 of her own children? Why shouldn’t a 52 year old man keep a harem of 6,000 8 year old girls? Then you have all the millions of different defintions of "marriage" to contend with. If one rejects the Biblical God, that person has no basis at all for saying anything is universally unethical, or sinful.

I see where this would conflict with our topic. I fall back to using our "god-given" reasoning to sort it out.

Reasoning (and ethics) truly is God-given, and is one of the best proofs of His existence because it couldn’t exist without Him.

Notice my use of quotation marks around "god-given"; I don't claim this is actually the case.
I think one would be hard pressed to show God is actually involved in any processes here on Earth.

Because if He weren’t, there would be chaos. God's law, written in the Bible and in our hearts, works as a restraint against evil. The further we, as a society, move away from His law, the more evil our society becomes.

In the Christian worldview, all human beings do sin and want to sin (disobey God’s standard and pursue their own instead). Someone might wonder, looking at Christianity, why did sin enter the human race because Adam and Eve sinned? Adam was placed by God as the head of creation, the “representative man,� so that when he sinned by rebelling against God’s word, all of creation was brought under bondage to sin.

I will accept an otherwise theological take on the issue of sin.
What I can't do is see where any evidence shows a God is pleased, mad, or otherwise concerned about human activity.

There is evidence; for example, the historical evidence of the Bible; however, if you rule this out, a priori, as constituting evidence, then you won’t see it as being evidence.

[GentleDove]

Within the Christian worldview, God defines marriage and the lawful expression of sex. Homosexuals, of course, are allowed to marry; however, they must marry someone of the opposite sex and remain faithful (in thought and deed) to his or her spouse. If someone does not marry, they must still remain chaste, whether that person has homosexual desires or heterosexual desires. When our desires rule over us, then we will chafe and rebel against God’s laws.

I'm sorry, GentleDove, but this is not the Christian view of marriage. This smacks more of the worldview of the Sadducees who challenge Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, who are told by Jesus that they are 'quite wrong' (Mark 12:27). The Sadducees thought of marriage in these legalistic Levirate terms (posing the problem of the woman's chastity and to whom she should belong as wife) and used it to argue against Jesus' project of overturning the dominant social order of his time.

The Sadducees were trying to trap Jesus in a contradiction because they did not believe in the resurrection. When Jesus said they were “quite wrong,� or “greatly mistaken,� He was talking about (in this context) their views on the resurrection.

Jesus' concept of marriage is between two people, not belonging to a patriarchal Levirate system of dominance and submission, but equals before God - 'like angels in heaven' (Mark 12:25).

Marriage is a creation ordinance, not a “Levirate� ordinance. I didn’t say anything about “dominance and submission� or equality in marriage, so I’m not sure what you’re addressing here. Does this have something to do with homosexuals marrying?

Jesus said that, after the resurrection, men and women will not “marry or be given in marriage� as the angels in heaven do not marry and are not given in marriage.

Patriarchal 'protection' of chastity-until-marriage or the continuance of purity codes which benefit the socially-privileged do not figure into the ethics of the kingdom of God.

I don’t really understand what you’re talking about, so I guess I can’t address it.

The Christian ethical attitude toward marriage cannot be obsessed with crude legalistic forms; it should be concerned first with content. Formal sanctification in marriage is not as important as the love, equality, respect and faithfulness which should be in the relationship to begin with. If there is a Christian (i.e., Greek-scriptural) argument to be made against homosexuality, it would have to be one which implies an inherent inequality in the relationship.

The Christian ethical attitude is defined by all of the Bible; if someone disagrees with what the Bible says, then I think that person should just admit it.

(Indeed, when Paul refers to homosexuality - arrenokoites - it is in the specific Roman-Imperial social context of abuse of little boys by older men, which is clearly and obviously exploitative.)

The word arrenokoites is a word, but it is not used in the Scriptures. The word Paul uses is arsenokoitai, and it means “male homosexuals� or “sodomites�—those who take the masculine role, or penetrating, in the male homosexual union. The word for the effeminate, or receiver, male homosexuals is malakoi.

I don’t believe that sin is a sin because in my estimation someone has been victimized. A sin is wrong because it is a repudiation of God’s holiness and righteousness, which He lets us know by telling us in the Bible what sin is.

Mmmm... nope. Again, that is a view of sin which is held by the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel. 'Sin' is not just breaking the letter of the law and working on the Sabbath; 'sin' is perpetuating systems of institutional injustice through debt and purity codes which cast people out or hold them in spiritual or material bondage. What Jesus did when he healed on the Sabbath was to show that victimising the sick was a greater sin than breaking (in a strict sense) the Mosaic social norm against activity on the Sabbath.

The scribes and Pharisees did not hold the view of sin that I stated. Jesus taught that there is a way to seem righteous on the outside, but inside be “lawless.� The Pharisees broke the commandments of God by adding and subtracting from His Word based on what seemed right in their own eyes. For example, they ignored Biblical law about showing mercy. They would not admit to sin, but denied that they sinned, and wanted to be shown to be righteous on their own merits and by their own terms. (See Matthew 5:17-20,
Matthew 23:1-28, and
Mark 7:5-7.)

[JoeyKnothead]

From Page 5 Post 42

The Bible says it’s the Word of God; but if you presuppose that the Bible is not the Word of God, then you wouldn’t take it on its own authority. I believe the Biblical worldview comports with reason and reality; whereas I think other worldviews are lacking.

This is why I challenge folks to show the Bible is actually the words, wants or wishes of the proposed God. I don't doubt GentleDove has come about his position by his own. What I do doubt is anyone's claim to know the words, wants or wishes of God.
I challenge the reality of donkeys talking to folks, the reality of folks rising up out of graves after three days, and various other claims within the Bible.

As I stated in another post, I don’t believe that sin is a sin because in my estimation someone has been victimized. A sin is wrong because it is a repudiation of God’s holiness and righteousness, which He lets us know by telling us in the Bible what sin is.

And I challenge folks who claim they know what God considers a sin. How can we know GentleDove knows God's opinion in this regard?

Governments, right or wrong, may hand out marriage licenses, but only God has the right to declare what marriage is, as Creator and King.

So it is said. My issue here is the complete lack of verification for what God considers in this regard. Words in a book that itself declares humans fallible seem shallow when it comes to the oppression of other's rights.

How can we know GentleDove's God is against anything? Because a book says so? I got a book that says a cow jumped over the Moon. Are we to revere this Moon jumping ability in cows, though we've never seen a cow actually jump over the Moon?

Consider the contrary. Why should governments hand out licenses at all if anyone can marry anyone (or anything, for that matter)?

Because they offer them to some.

Why shouldn’t three women and a 5 year old boy marry a Doberman pincer?

Because a 5 year old and a Pincer can't be reasonably assumed to offer informed consent. The three women should be able to declare themselves.

Why shouldn’t a person marry and divorce different people and things 102 times in her lifetime, having children with 60 different men, and then marrying 20 of her own children?

If this is the case, then all those theists who seek remarriage (who are often "pro family") should not be allow their remarriages.

It's not about how many one marries, but who they are allowed to marry. As the government is in the marriage business, it should stay out of the business of who one loves.

Why shouldn’t a 52 year old man keep a harem of 6,000 8 year old girls?

Does GentleDove contend 8 year old girls are able to give informed consent?

I'm only supporting those marriages between folks who can be reasonably considered to make these decisions for themselves, devoid of anyone's personal opinion of who loves who, or who has a right to love who. (insert whom where ever it applies)

Then you have all the millions of different defintions of "marriage" to contend with.

I notice these "millions of different definitions" are so often proposed by those who seek one definition of marriage.
As there are billions of potential couples, I contend there could be billions of definitions.
Again, if the government is to be involved, it should recognise the diversity of its population in marriage.

If one rejects the Biblical God, that person has no basis at all for saying anything is universally unethical, or sinful.

Problem is it's the religious folks trying to declare what is "sinful".

I don't consider one person loving another to be unethical, no. Nor do I consider it sinful. Nor do I consider it any of the government's business.

Can GentleDove offer verifiable evidence his proposed God has a monopoly on ethics or morality?

I think one would be hard pressed to show God is actually involved in any processes here on Earth.

Because if He weren’t, there would be chaos. God's law, written in the Bible and in our hearts, works as a restraint against evil. The further we, as a society, move away from His law, the more evil our society becomes.

Is it GentleDove's contention chaos can't be found on this planet?

One man's "evil" is another's night with the hot twins.

I challenge GentleDove to offer verifiable evidence his proposed God has issues with some folks getting married. I'm not talking about claims in a book, I'm talking about some verifiable means by which we can know the proposed God is upset over human behavior.

There is evidence; for example, the historical evidence of the Bible; however, if you rule this out, a priori, as constituting evidence, then you won’t see it as being evidence.

Heck no, I don't rule anything out. What I do ask is that if we are to use the government to restrict the rights of others based on the wants or wishes of a god, we should surely be able to verify such.

[Jrosemary]

Mmmm... nope. Again, that is a view of sin which is held by the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospel. 'Sin' is not just breaking the letter of the law and working on the Sabbath; 'sin' is perpetuating systems of institutional injustice through debt and purity codes which cast people out or hold them in spiritual or material bondage. What Jesus did when he healed on the Sabbath was to show that victimising the sick was a greater sin than breaking (in a strict sense) the Mosaic social norm against activity on the Sabbath.

But the Talmud permits healing on Shabbat. Heck, the saying credited to Jesus--"the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath"--was and is a common rabbinic saying. (You can find a variation of it in the Talmud.) The most Orthodox doctor, nurse, paramedic or what have you can work on Shabbat without fear of violating the mitzvah to remember Shabbat and keep it holy.

The scribes and Pharisees did not hold the view of sin that I stated. Jesus taught that there is a way to seem righteous on the outside, but inside be “lawless.� The Pharisees broke the commandments of God by adding and subtracting from His Word based on what seemed right in their own eyes. For example, they ignored Biblical law about showing mercy. They would not admit to sin, but denied that they sinned, and wanted to be shown to be righteous on their own merits and by their own terms. (See Matthew 5:17-20,
Matthew 23:1-28, and Mark 7:5-7.)

First of all, it's not possible to blanketly characterize the members of a wide and varied movement within Second-Temple Judaism this way--that would be like me saying all Fundamentalist Christians of the 20th and 21st centuries are evil hypocrites. Obviously such a statement would be grossly unfair and patently false.

The Pharisees were not fundamentalists, so I'm not trying to compare the two groups. I'm trying to show that to make the blanket statements you do about the Pharisees is likewise grossly unfair and patently false. In fact, I find it troubling that you'd make such a statement about the Pharisees at all.

Firstly, there were many different schools of thought among the Pharisees; the Talmud preserves many of the arguments that took place between different schools and different teachers. (Most famously between the 'liberal' Hillel and more 'conservative' Shammai.)

Secondly, the Pharisees were not the narrow-minded, legalistic caricatures the New Testament often seems to portray--not unless the New Testament authors tried to find examples from a right-wing fringe of Pharisees. Any number of Christian scholars are quick to point out that to use the term 'Pharisee' to mean 'narrow-minded, legalistic and hypocritical' is a grave injustice to Judaism.

The Pharisees were the the men who, among other things, championed repentance, prayer, and deeds of loving kindness over and against the animal sacrifice system of the Temple. They were, in fact, the forefathers of rabbinic Judaism.

[MagusYanam]

Firstly, there were many different schools of thought among the Pharisees; the Talmud preserves many of the arguments that took place between different schools and different teachers. (Most famously between the 'liberal' Hillel and more 'conservative' Shammai.)

Secondly, the Pharisees were not the narrow-minded, legalistic caricatures the New Testament often seems to portray--not unless the New Testament authors tried to find examples from a right-wing fringe of Pharisees. Any number of Christian scholars are quick to point out that to use the term 'Pharisee' to mean 'narrow-minded, legalistic and hypocritical' is a grave injustice to Judaism.

With respect, Jrosemary, the question at hand is not the historical injustices against Jews (which I admit were very real and continue to be relevant today) but the current injustice against homosexuals.

That said, I admit freely that the Pharisees portrayed in the Gospel were very much political cartoons and not reflective of the entirety of the reform movement within Judaism. What Mark does in his Gospel is a lot like, for example, Bolshevik parodies of the Mensheviks as tools of the bourgeoisie (even though, to a large extent, they weren't). The Christian social project shared a number of similarities with the Pharisee social project, but they differed drastically in their political strategies toward the Temple state. As a result, when competing for followers, it was historically a politically shrewd move for the Christians to brand the Pharisees as 'sellouts'.

The Sadducees were trying to trap Jesus in a contradiction because they did not believe in the resurrection. When Jesus said they were “quite wrong,� or “greatly mistaken,� He was talking about (in this context) their views on the resurrection.

This kind of trivialises the story, because the Sadducees had a vested interest in denying the resurrection or any eschatological promise of a new social order. They challenged Jesus on the issue of marriage, which figured heavily into their conception of the social order which they sought to uphold. If, in the 'kingdom of heaven', a woman would have seven husbands, it would (to them) mean moral chaos.

Jesus' argument to the Sadducees does not serve as an argument in favour of the resurrection. It serves as an argument attacking and overturning the patriarchal Sadducean interpretation of Torah - asserting that in the 'kingdom of heaven' marriage as it was practiced in the world of the time would no longer be a structure which oppressed women and conceived of them as property.

The word arrenokoites is a word, but it is not used in the Scriptures. The word Paul uses is arsenokoitai, and it means “male homosexuals� or “sodomites�—those who take the masculine role, or penetrating, in the male homosexual union. The word for the effeminate, or receiver, male homosexuals is malakoi.

My bad. You're right - arsenokoitai is used in Scripture, rather than arrenokoitai (which means simply 'homosexual' rather than 'sodomiser').

But implied in the Scriptural use of arsenokoitai is the role of social oppressor; people who used their positions of privilege to victimise children. As such, any use of this Scripture to attack homosexuals today (who do not have such positions of privilege) is misapplication.

I don’t really understand what you’re talking about, so I guess I can’t address it.

Well then, allow me to be explicit. The system of thought that objectifies or instrumentalises women as property or as childbearers is no longer entrenched in our society the way it was in the Temple state. However, patriarchal definitions of 'marriage' are still being used to exclude and oppress sexual minorities - in this case, homosexuals.

As I said before, if there were a Scriptural case to be made against homosexuality, it would have to be made on the grounds that homosexuals were perpetuating sexual and social inequalities. However, today we heterosexuals are in a position of social privilege - and have used that privilege to deny homosexuals access to various legal and social rights and protections (visitation, adoption, tax benefits, church membership, &c.). To be perfectly blunt, perpetuating the fiction that homosexuals are intrinsically sinful in ways in which the rest of us are not is at odds with the existential aims of the Gospel. Jesus opened his table fellowship to all people, even those considered 'unclean' by the rest of the society.

The Christian ethical attitude is defined by all of the Bible; if someone disagrees with what the Bible says, then I think that person should just admit it.

No - the Christian ethical attitude takes the example of Christ, as set forth in the Gospel, as its moral anchor. There is no other Way for us but through him. The Bible is sacred literature; as a narrative it argues with itself constantly (just as the people who accepted it as holy argued amongst themselves constantly about what it means) - making the text into an idol only serves to diminish the text itself, and how we allow it to speak to us.

Liberal Christianity, for all its faults and excesses, got one thing absolutely right in historical criticism. It brought back the dialogue with Scripture that allows it to speak to us rather than at us.

For example, they ignored Biblical law about showing mercy.

And isn't that what we do today against homosexuals by denying them legal rights and access to the social and spiritual media of redemption?

[Fisherking]

No - the Christian ethical attitude takes the example of Christ, as set forth in the Gospel, as its moral anchor.

"Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given." -- Jesus

(italics added)

[MagusYanam]

Fisherking - with respect, maybe you missed the part where I said:

making the text into an idol only serves to diminish the text itself, and how we allow it to speak to us.

Jesus wasn't addressing the issue of homosexuality at all in St Matthew 19. The question the Pharisees asked him was about the lawfulness of divorce; again, using the text as justification to oppress homosexuals and exclude them from having legal and social rights in a modern-day representative republic is misapplication, indeed, it should be seen as an abuse of Scripture.

Jesus was attacking here the patriarchal idea that women could be treated like property to be owned and discarded by men - instead, the ideal of marriage should (instead of being the relationship between owner and property) be 'no longer two, but one flesh'. The idea that a man could be legally bound to another man or a woman to another woman wasn't even on the radar screen for the purposes of the Pharisees' question; why would Jesus complicate his own answer?

[micatala]

No - the Christian ethical attitude takes the example of Christ, as set forth in the Gospel, as its moral anchor.

"Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given." -- Jesus

(italics added)

In addition to what Magus has written, I would also suggest that what Jesus is doing here is holding up an ideal. Under the best of circumstances, a man and a women marry and stay together until one of them dies. (Paul later adds it is best for widows not to remarry, but we'll leave that digression out for now).

Now, I am all for supporting life long monogamy as the ideal. However, something being the ideal does not mean everything else is forbidden.

For example, polygamy is allowed in both the OT and the NT. There are not explicit prohibitions that I am aware of in either testament. In the NT, Paul writes that Deacons should have but one wife, but this is a special suggestion or requirement for that office, not for believers in general. Thus, the ideal as presented in the quote by Fisherking does not equate to a requirement.



Most churches today allow divorce. Most churches today allow divorced people to remarry. I have never heard anyone in a Christian church refer to divorce or remarriage after divorce as an "abomination to God" and yet, we have arguably even more explicit instructions from Jesus himself than we do regarding homosexuality. Divorce and remarriage after divorce constitute adultery except for the caveats that adultery has already occurred.

Now, this does not answer either the question regarding whether God considers homosexuality an abomination, or whether all CHristians should consider it so. However, it does clearly indicate that many, if not most or nearly all Christians and Christian churches and denominations are employing a double standard here.

Most Christians allow adults to make their own decisions about divorce and remarriage without standing in their way or officially labeling their actions as abominable. We allow them to stand before God on their own and accept responsbility as they see fit for their actions.

Some of the Christians who do this will not allow gays the same respect or freedom within the church.

[East of Eden]

And isn't that what we do today against homosexuals by denying them legal rights and access to the social and spiritual media of redemption?

Repentance comes before redemption.